(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-07-01)
Cox, William Matthew
Two areas of sustainable development were investigated to test the importance of economic development and the planning process on energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions outcomes between 2000 and 2010 across all sectors in the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. Following this, a model was developed to evaluate the social benefits and costs of solar photovoltaic programs in the City of Atlanta. Results indicated that some econometric models relating emissions to GDP per-capita are poor descriptors over this decade. Planning process and growth in GDP per-capita are shown to be better indicators of performance, although these are also subject to specific contextual differences between regions, notably through adversarial polycentrism. Existing solar photovoltaic programs are also estimated to provide tens to hundreds of millions in cumulative net benefits to the City of Atlanta, although this is likely only a fraction of the potential. These findings suggest that the management of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions could be improved through increased participatory planning approaches and through the removal of barriers to realizing cost-effective improvements in energy and carbon performance.